Related papers: Crystallization and arrest mechanisms of model col…
Liquids crystallize as they cool; however, when crystallization is avoided in some way, they supercool, maintaining their liquidity, and freezing into glass at low temperatures, as ubiquitously observed. These metastable states crystallize…
We use numerical simulations to study the crystallization of monodisperse systems of hard aspherical particles. We find that particle shape and crystallizability can be easily related to each other when particles are characterized in terms…
We examine the crystallization dynamics of nanoparticles reversibly tethered by DNA hybridization. We show that the crystallization happens readily only in a narrow temperature "slot," and always proceeds via a two-step process, mediated by…
We unravel the existence and nonequilibrium response of one-dimensional harmonically trapped droplet configurations in the presence of a central potential barrier or well. For fixed negative chemical potentials, it is shown that droplets…
Advances in experimental techniques and in theoretical models have improved our understanding of protein crystallization. But they have also left open questions regarding the protein phase behavior and self-assembly kinetics, such as why…
We study the phase behavior of hard spheres confined between two parallel hard plates using extensive computer simulations. We determine the full equilibrium phase diagram for arbitrary densities and plate separations from one to five…
Colloidal particles trapped at an interface between two fluids can form a wide range of different structures. Replacing one of the fluid with a liquid crystal increases the complexity of interactions and results in a greater range of…
Colloidal systems offer the ideal conditions to study the nucleation process, both from an experimental viewpoint, due to their relative large size and long time-scales, and from a modeling point of view, due to the tunability of their…
The early stage evolution of local atomic structures in a multicomponent metallic glass during its crystallization process has been investigated via molecular dynamics simulation. It is found that the initial thermal stability and earliest…
Crucial to gaining control over crystallisation in multicomponent materials or accurately modelling rheological behaviour of magma flows is to understand the mechanisms by which crystal nuclei form. The microscopic nature of such nuclei,…
The lack of detailed balance in active colloidal suspensions allows dissipation to determine stationary states. Here we show that slow viscous flow produced by polar or apolar active colloids near plane walls mediates attractive…
We consider the nature of the fluid-solid phase transition in a polydisperse mixture of hard spheres. For a sufficiently polydisperse mixture crystallisation occurs with simultaneous fractionation. At the fluid-solid boundary, a broad fluid…
Attractive colloidal particles can form a disordered elastic solid or gel when quenched into a two-phase region, if the volume fraction is sufficiently large. When the interactions are comparable to thermal energies the stress-bearing…
By molecular-dynamics simulations, we have studied the devitrification (or crystallization) of aged hard-sphere glasses. First, we find that the dynamics of the particles are intermittent: Quiescent periods, when the particles simply…
We consider a system of spherical particles interacting by means of a pair potential equal to a finite constant for interparticle distances smaller than the sphere diameter and zero outside. The model may be a prototype for the interaction…
Systems with long-range interactions when quenced into a metastable state near the pseudo-spinodal exhibit nucleation processes that are quite different from the classical nucleation seen near the coexistence curve. In systems with…
When a droplet is brought in contact with an undercooled surface, it wets the substrate and solidifies at the same time. The interplay between the phase transition effects and the contact-line motion, leading to its arrest, remains poorly…
The dynamical arrest of gels is the consequence of a well defined structural phase transition, leading to the formation of a spanning cluster of bonded particles. The dynamical glass transition, instead, is not accompanied by any clear…
We consider homogeneous crystallisation rates in confocal microscopy experiments on colloidal nearly hard spheres at the single particle level. These we compare with Brownian dynamics simuations by carefully modelling the softness in the…
We discuss crystal formation in supersaturated suspensions of monodisperse hard spheres with a concentration of hard spheres randomly pinned in space and time. The pinning procedure introduces an external length scale and an external time…